Definition of "glimpse"

Here hid by shrub-wood, there by glimpses seen.

1798, Samuel Rogers, An Epistle to a Friend

Selwyn, sitting up rumpled and cross-legged on the floor, after having boloed Drina to everybody's exquisite satisfaction, looked around at the sudden rustle of skirts to catch a glimpse of a vanishing figure—a glimmer of ruddy hair and the white curve of a youthful face, half-buried in a muff.

1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter I, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company

An opening sequence, featuring a de-aged Ford playing a younger Indy, is a bold and nostalgic gambit, offering a glimpse of what you've missed.

2023 June 29, City AM, London, page 18, column 2

Reuiſits thus the glimpſes of the Moone, / Making Night hidious? And we fooles of Nature,

c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene iv], page 257

Light as the lightning glimpse they ran.

1667, John Milton, “Book VI”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,

A hope that, glimpsed, must fade; / ⁠A form, illusion made, / That, vanishing, shall come no more again!

1916, Florence Earle Coates, “Cendrillon”, in Poems, volume I

Those wild hills are surely the outpost of a frightful cosmic race—as I doubt all the less since reading that a new ninth planet has been glimpsed beyond Neptune, just as those influences had said it would be glimpsed.

1931, H. P. Lovecraft, chapter 8, in The Whisperer in Darkness

Straight waies on heaps the thrunging clouds doe rise, / As though the heauen were angry with the night, / Deformed shadowes glimpsing in his sight; […]

1596, Michael Drayton, “Mortimeriados. The Lamentable Ciuell Warres of Edward the Second and the Barrons.”, in J[ohn] Payne Collier, editor, Poems by Michael Drayton. […], London: […] J[ohn] B[owyer] Nichols and Sons, […] [for the Roxburghe Club], published 1856, page 315